


Ma Mémoire Sale

by onthesea_mystery



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst, Character Death, Getting Together, Hurt, Les Chansons D'Amour - AU, Love Songs - AU, M/M, Polyamory, Slow Burn, give this a shot, idek what I'm doing anymore, this is equal parts depressing and not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:53:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onthesea_mystery/pseuds/onthesea_mystery
Summary: There was a terrible shuddering noise, and Adam's gaze snapped upward. It took him three long seconds to realize where the sound had come from, but then he saw Ronan's shoulder's convulsing, the top of his head pressed against the wood of the door.If he hadn't known where they were before, he knew now.He stepped close to Ronan, reached around him and took the keys from his trembling hands. “Let me,” he said, soft, opening the door.--Love Songs AU
Relationships: Noah Czerny/Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny/Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch/Richard Gansey III/Noah Czerny
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	1. The Departure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [charactershoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/charactershoes/gifts).



> cw: major character death, internalized homophobia, canonical dark thoughts/ideations. 
> 
> bear with me here. this is a story in three parts.

“It’s me,” the voice was barely there, cushioned somewhere between the din of passing cars and the static of the phone line. He needed a new phone, needed to stop calling on the walk from the El to the theater, but there was very little reason to reintroduce that argument, not tonight. 

“I’m almost at the theater,” the voice came again, faint with exertion, with the chill, with all the regular things that made Noah seem half here and half elsewhere, like whispering down a long tube into someone else’s ear, feet and inches separating, but somehow the sound waves reverberated, could be felt deep into the skull.

“Ah,” Ronan shifted the phone to his right ear, pressed it closer, “what are you seeing tonight?”

There was a moment where Ronan could make out the traffic on the other end of the line, the deep wheeze emitted from the grill of the buses, a bicycle chiming and speeding, evaporating into the chaos of Halstead Avenue. Admittedly there was something practiced about the noise, or really the _lack_ of noise from Noah—he was often practiced in this way, in silence, though Ronan lacked the tools to differentiate one pause from the next, especially without being able to see his face. 

A shocked inhale came next, or maybe it was just an inhale, deep and sudden as Noah hit a wind tunnel, tried catching his breath across the dissecting streets. This was followed by a soft, “Excuse me,” Noah moving into a crowd, maybe, pressing himself through the spaces left by the people, funneling towards the theater, swift, though no less polite. 

Ronan pressed the phone closer to his ear, spun in his chair to wave, irritated, at Gansey, who was listening to New Order through his speakers. Gansey stuck his tongue out, shoved in the cord of his headphones, and there was quiet on Ronan’s end, or close enough to it—there was nothing to be done about the clacking of Gansey’s keyboard.

“Where are you?” Noah asked, finally, and there was serenity from his end too, aside from the crackling of the line. He had made it inside, was probably unwinding his scarf, cheeks red, nose red, breathless. 

Ronan swallowed. “At the studio.”

“Ah,” came Noah’s small voice. 

“What are you seeing?” 

“A movie.”

Ronan said, “Seriously, what are you seeing?”

A ding, the elevator being called in the theater lobby. Noah hated the stairs, always avoided them where he could, but there was the fact they’d loose each other once he stepped into the glass box, once the doors closed—this, irrationally, annoyed Ronan. Noah needed a new phone.

“I’m sick of seeing movies alone.” There was no malice he could detect, only the fraying strands of disappointment they were both wearing these days. If Ronan closed his eyes he could just about make out the withered lines of their relationship, a cord unraveling against the constant strain, the incessant rubbing of missed date nights and promises made but never followed through on.

“Noah,” he tried for levity, selfish in his want to end the call on a positive note, “if you see that movie without me, I’ll be very disappointed.”

A huff of a laugh, or maybe a scoff. With Noah, it was always hard to tell.

Ronan looked back over his shoulder; Gansey’s desk was on the opposite end of the room. He was tapping a pencil against the bulbous ear of his noise canceling headphones, deep in concentration. 

The shape of an apology was forming at the back of his throat, as it often did, but Ronan’s toolbox was a pitiful thing, unhelpful most always, leaving him stranded deep in the reeds, up to his ankles in muck of his own making, Noah, stranded in his own right at the other end of the line, in the theater lobby, waiting for a sincerity that never came. 

“Do you love me,” Noah tried again, “or not?”

The response was instant, and filled with the sincerity Noah often craved, but perhaps not placed where it was most needed. “That’s a dumb question.” Ronan pushed his chair away from his own desk, wheeled himself behind a standing wire book shelf, half hidden from Gansey, now. 

“Gansey’s there,” Noah continued, “isn’t he?”

It shouldn’t make a difference whether Gansey was with Ronan or not, as was their agreement, but things were unraveling for all of three of them, had been for weeks now—Ronan felt cheated. Tricked, even, an unsuspecting animal led into a cage under the pretense of a fresh meal, only to find himself ensnared at the whims of those just out of reach beyond the bars. Noah had led him here, and Gansey had encouraged it, and now it had become this. _This_ being resentment and suspicion and disappointment, a well so deep that a pebble dropped never reached the water.

When Ronan didn’t answer, because he couldn’t bring himself to speak, which would inevitably lead to an argument, some untamable thing bred on a new, festering anger, because he couldn’t bring himself to lie, either, not to Noah and certainly not about Gansey, Noah had nothing left to do but click his tongue. “Ronan.” A ding. The elevator. “My ride’s here.”

With finality, the call ended. 

Ronan dropped his head against the shelf, peeked through the spines of design books and architecture magazines and all the creative things Gansey felt compelled to fill their little, meaningless studio with. 

Gansey was still tapping his pencil against his headphones, oblivious and stagnant in his work, so Ronan groped into a cup of paper clips artfully placed as a bookend, began tossing them at Gansey’s head. The first missed its mark, overshot by a good foot or two. The second hit Gansey square in the head, startled him into pulling off his headphones, spin around and glare at Ronan.

Ronan smirked. “Daydreaming?”

“Excuse me?” Gansey’s hand felt to the back of his head. Ronan appreciated the distinct lines of his abdomen, bicep, shoulders. 

“What are you thinking about?” Ronan wheeled himself out from behind the bookshelf, sneered, “Was it love?”

“Ronan.” This was Gansey’s Professional voice, one that suggested this line of questioning was not only unwelcome, but hardly decorous. It also suggested that Gansey knew Ronan’s mood had fouled considerably over the span of a single phone call, that he knew quite well who had been on the other line, what might have been said.

Ronan decided to press his luck. “Were you thinking of me, Dick?”

Gansey rolled his eyes. “Hardly.”

Ronan rolled his chair across the room. Gansey rolled away.

“I want to know,” Ronan moved ever closer, “if you were daydreaming about me.” A pause. Then, an amendment. “ _Wet_ dreaming.”

Gansey had stopped trying to evade him, perhaps defeated, or maybe picking up the end of a thread Ronan hadn’t realized he left out in the open. Their knees were nearly touching now. 

Gansey pressed the whole length of his hand into the meat of Ronan’s thigh, tugged, legs bracketing. He caught Ronan’s eyes. “I wasn’t daydreaming _or_ wet dreaming about you,” Gansey’s voice had left Professional mode, but was no less insistent, “but you know how I feel about you. Always.”

Ronan did his smoker’s exhale, as Noah called it, then wrenched himself from Gansey’s grip, rolled back to his desk, slammed the chair beneath the table top, stewed.

“I want to go home,” was all he could manage saying.

“That was Noah,” Gansey countered. Ronan heard him stand, step close. A hand cupped the side of his neck, right at the junction of his shoulder. Ronan, desperate in his gloom, leaned into it. “Did he yell at you?”

“Noah doesn’t yell.”

Gansey _hmm_ an assent. 

There was nothing left, after that. Words were useless here, as they both knew, tangled as there were into the mess of this _thing_ they all shared, tethered between one another with history and love and their bodies, now, too, and a deep, yearning cavern that Ronan just assumed was desire, something he’d always lived with and something that craved filling, but only seemed to gasp and shove itself open further, a widening chasm right in the center of his chest where his heart should be. 

_Do you love me, or not?_

Noah never yelled, but his whispers moved like mice, evasive and pervasive, tucked into the spots you never went looking for until one day, forgetting your own promises to yourself never to peer too closely, moved a single box and stared it directly in the face. That was Noah. That was Ronan’s feelings for Noah. A chord being struck in the silence of a large hall. A pebble falling into Lake Michigan. The churning of a sea halfway around the world.

—

Ronan found him three blocks away from their apartment.

His was languid, and he was smoking. Ronan watched him for a block, followed fifty paces behind, willed Noah to turn on the spot, call him out then and there.

But the streets were quiet, a blue grey punctured only by the orange glow of street lights.

When they were two blocks away, Ronan ran to catch him, snagged his arm and pulled him around.

Cigarette flung into the gutter, Noah’s mouth was halfway to a scream when he realized who was holding on to him. The fear fell away, washed into something more malleable, unassuming. 

He carefully extracted his arm from Ronan’s grasp.

Ronan said, “Hi.”

Noah said, “Hello.”

“How was your movie?” The were walking, the same languid pace Noah preferred to keep on nights like this, full with promise, a single, stark line stretching out in every direction.

“It was good,” Noah admitted, hands shoved into his pockets, “for a car movie.”

“Ah.” Ronan categorized the shape Noah’s arm made at his side, a long twist, black coat disappearing into a neon green lined pocket. The posture said, _please don’t touch me_. Ronan didn’t.

They lost another block to silence. Whether it was a companionable quiet or something else all together was left to interpretation. 

As they turned up their street, they were assaulted with Christmas lights, recently hung. The chill of the night would usually push them closer together, and if not the chill, then the warmth from the windows certainly would.

Tonight, they held themselves apart.

At their front door, Noah waited. 

Ronan looked down at him, memorized the shape the string lights made in the reflection of his eyes. His hair was pushed up under his beanie. His nose was red, so red. Ronan wanted to kiss it, rub it against the stubble on his chin. 

He didn’t.

“Ronan,” Noah said at the same time Ronan said, “It’s hard.”

A pause, a crease between Noah’s eyebrows. The shape of it seemed to say _what’s so hard about loving me?_ but also _why him, over me?_

“We were only working, tonight.” Ronan never lied. He often didn’t speak, for fear the truth would cut too deep, wound critically, but when he _did_ speak, it was without pretense. This was important to Ronan. 

The lines on Noah’s forehead smoothed out. It seemed this was important to Noah as well.

Then, Noah persisted, emboldened, maybe, by Ronan’s veracity. “What’s hard?”

“Loving the both of you,” Ronan ducked his head. “Remembering to tell you.” _Remembering to show up._

When he looked back up, Noah was nodding. The lines were there again, puckered between his brows, giving Noah’s face an unfriendly shape. Ronan hated himself for making it so. Ronan hated himself.

“I need a minute.” Ronan knew what it meant to need time with your thoughts, didn’t follow behind when Noah keyed into their apartment building. 

This was new territory. They were still working out the details. Learning the roadmap of their desire, shared as it was in some places, foreign as it was in others. 

Noah had initiated their expansion, but it was taking him the longest to adjust. Sometimes Ronan thought he might never adjust. Ronan didn’t know what would be better; going back to normal, or stopping while they were ahead. 

Just as Ronan made the decision to follow Noah inside, there was Gansey.

“Hey,” he said, brown hair halo’d in the glow of the street. All the picture needed was snow, and then it would be perfect. Ronan smiled.

Gansey closed the distance, hand around the back of Ronan’s neck, kissed him. His lips were chapped, face scruffy with a two day beard. Ronan couldn’t stop himself from grinning, silly, against his lips, against the burn in his heart. Where things were difficult with Noah, they fell into place easily with Gansey.

Ronan said, “Let’s go up.”

—

“Look who I found on the street,” was what Ronan said when Noah swung open the door.

For his part, Noah didn’t look distressed to see Gansey. If anything, the worry lines cleared when face to face with the third in their triad. Noah reached out, smoothed a hand through Gansey’s wild hair, cupped it at his cheek, rubbed a thumb across the bone there.

Then, he stepped back, said, “Come in.”

Noah and Ronan shared this apartment going on three years, now. Gansey was a recent addition who now had a toothbrush in their bathroom, extra clothes stored in the top drawer of Noah’s dresser, a ring by the door to hang his keys from, and a designated turn-to-cook-dinner night. 

The bed wasn’t nearly big enough for the three of them, but they made due on most nights. It was easier now that it was winter and the single heater was on the fritz, radiator spitting and spewing sporadically in the living room, the bedroom left crisp and separate, four walls with only limbs and torsos and passion to keep it warm through the night. 

Tonight they sat in a line, propped against the headboard, each of them reading. The picture of them was this: _Cat’s Cradle_ , Vonnegut (Noah), _Surrealist Manifesto_ , Breton (Ronan), and _Human Sacrifices Among Pagans and Christians_ , Rives (Gansey).

They were warm where they touched, legs crossed and caressing, mindless but no less welcome.

Into the silence, Gansey shuffled his papers, set them into his lap. “The order is all wrong,” he said, made to climb over Ronan.

Ronan flailed, pushed him back into his spot, but Noah was laughing, a smile none had seen in a long time, so Gansey persisted. Ronan let him win.

They settled in again, reading, but it wasn’t long before Noah started yawning. Gansey, ever the responsible of the three, plucked their books out of their hands, stashed them on the bedside table, and switched off the lamp. 

They settled into one another, Gansey with his head pressed into Noah’s chest, Noah’s arm snaking out and grasping at Ronan’s fingers, Ronan’s hand cupped around the dip in Gansey’s hip. They fell asleep this way, unhurried, between kisses shared, legs shoved between thighs, a hand or two straying, and words whispered into darkness, against lips, hair brushed off brow bones, fingers swiping at lips. 

They were warm.

—

Noah rarely attended church with Ronan. Gansey never did.

When Noah did, it was in the shape of an apology, words they’d never learned to trade, as it was easier to trade in action. Words evade them both, almost always. Ronan appreciated the gesture, as unnecessary as it was. If anyone was to be apologizing, it was Ronan to Noah. 

Ronan marked Declan’s face when he arrived with Noah, the unattractive pinch to it, decided it was too early to reinvigorate any number of their arguments, a decision that came easier as the years went on, as he felt Noah press in tighter behind him, warmth in a reminder that he wasn’t alone, not in this, not in the place he sometimes felt abandoned by God Himself.

They shared a pew in the middle of the church, not too close to the front, not to close to the door. The service was a muted hum in what had become the daily chaos of Ronan’s life. Here, with Noah to his right, feigning the words of the prayers to appease Declan, and Matthew to his left, smiling the whole length of the service, the world became an almost bearable thing, where questions of loyalty and love mattered not, where all that mattered was his absolution, forgiveness in his fall from grace.

At the end, they loitered in the lobby while Declan chatted with the older parishioners. Matthew, overeager and unaware, asked the pair of them, “Where’s Gansey?”

Noah stiffened next to Ronan, near imperceptible, but where their suit jackets had been caressing, arm to arm, they now bore an inch, two inches, of distance. 

Ronan scowled, “It’s not important.”

Noah looked at him, quick, then touched at the hair behind his left ear, a nervous tick, born from uncertainty, one of the few of Noah’s tells that Ronan had come to internalize. 

Gansey never attended church with Ronan, but there was no way for Noah to know that. For all Noah knew, _he_ was the one invading on Gansey’s space, _he_ was the trespasser in the secret, holy slice of Ronan’s life, an invitee only through pity, never through love. 

The air was seeping from the room, quickly. 

Declan appeared at the side of their little circle, said, “Brunch?” 

It was an olive branch Ronan might have hated any other day, but saw it now like a hand thrust into the mist of ocean spray in the crashing of a storm. If they could just get out of here, then Ronan could talk to Noah, reassure him, say…something. Anything.

“Sorry,” Noah said, toneless. “I have to get to work.”

A lie. Ronan knew Noah’s schedule like the back of his hand. Ronan’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing as they walked to Declan’s car. He said nothing as Noah waved, the car pulling from the church lot, Noah’s face a mask over pain, Noah’s face fading in the rearview.

He said nothing. 

Declan, on the other hand, waited only two blocks before, “Trouble in paradise?”

“Fuck you.” There was no malice, just syllables strung together through force of habit as to fill the emptiness that was threatening to overtake him entirely. 

“No fighting!” Matthew chirped from the backseat, busy though he was with his video game. 

Declan’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, jaw working. “I know we don’t…”

There was no point finishing the sentence. Ronan couldn’t blame him for trying. He himself wished there was enough in him left to try. All the fight felt like it was dripping through the spindling cracks that made up his whole body. Ronan was a mirror, punched to millions of shards, impossible to look at for too long. Impossible to look at.

“I’m,” Declan tried again, stopped again. Ronan cast a quick glance, then forced himself to look back out at the street. 

“I don’t understand,” Matthew said, through the tension, either oblivious or all-too-knowing, clicking periodically at the Switch in his lap, “why Noah gets so weird about Gansey. He’s your oldest friend. I think your boyfriend should be okay with that.”

Ronan barked out a laugh. 

“He’s not wrong,” Declan chimed over Ronan’s bitterness, the picture of reason.

“You’re right,” Ronan said, matching the emptiness of Noah’s voice, feeling the confession take shape before he could shove it away again, “but Gansey isn’t just my oldest friend anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Matthew asked, innocence thicker than syrup. Declan’s eyes were hard and unmoving from the windshield.

Ronan didn’t lie, _couldn’t_ lie, not even by omission, not to Matthew. He said, “We’re together. All of us.”

“Hm.” Matthew put his game down, suddenly more interested in the world passing by his window, thoughtful. “So, like. A menage-a-trios?”

“Matthew,” Declan warned, lethal, at the exact same time Ronan sneered, “Exactly like a menage-a-trios.”

Declan’s jaw worked again. Matthew hummed in the backseat. The contrast was causing him whiplash. If only someone would yell. If only someone would prove to Ronan just how _wrong_ it all was. Being gay wasn’t enough, now there was _this._

On top of all the sin, there was the fact that he was nearing thirty and still fought himself from feeling too deeply, fought himself on expressing those feelings that crept through anyway. He thought of all the pain he had created in his life, the people he shoved aside and the people who forced their way into his life anyway, how he tossed them to and fro with little concern for the consequences. He thought of how Noah’s whole body had gone rigid at the mention of Gansey. He thought of how angry it had made him, even if that wasn’t the right thing to feel at all.

Declan turned the car into a cramped parking lot, cut the engine. No one moved to get out, cross the parking lot to their weekly brunch spot. 

Ronan open and closed his fists in his lap.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” Declan tried.

“You aren’t going to tell me I’m a monster?” Ronan dug his nails in his palms, reveled at the crescents cutting red and brutal into the flesh there.

“Ronan.” And Declan’s voice was soft, impossibly soft, and it was such a contrast to everything he knew from Declan, everything he knew to live within himself—years and distance had dulled the sharpness in his life, and Noah’s calmness and consistency and camaraderie had added meaning where there had never been definition before, like a television switching from SD to HD in the blink of an eye—but it was so easy to slip back into the darkness at the first sign of bleakness, to remember the black stroke of his life before he moved away from home, worked on the hatred stored up in his bones like a armor working backwards, eating inward instead of protecting outward. 

Ronan dropped his head into his hands. “We’re at an impasse.” It was a very Gansey thing to say, all things considered. 

“What does that mean?”

“He’s forcing me to break up with him.”

“You’re leaving Noah?” This was Matthew, face stuck between the two fronts seats. 

“No.” Ronan shook his head too, lifted his gaze to stare at the blinking neon sign hanging above the diner door. “Gansey. Probably.”

“Oh.” Matthew dropped back against his seat. “You don’t want to.”

“I want both of them.” 

“Oh.”

It was a while before Declan spoke again. He had his head on the window to his left. He was calm, like a wave pulled back from the shore. “Forcing you?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ronan bared his teeth, another force of habit in the face of Declan’s particular brand of pragmatism.

“Then what is it that you meant?” Declan slide his gaze to meet Ronan’s, but in no other way gave ground.

Ronan considered. What _did_ he mean? 

He meant that he felt trapped. He meant that he knew what he should do and it was at war with what he wanted to do. He meant that he’d never leave Noah, not even for Gansey, and that scared him. He meant that he knew he’d have Gansey no matter how things turned out between the three of them, knew that he wasn’t sure if he could go back to the way things were before. He meant that for the first time in his life, he had a grasp on how things were supposed to be, and it was being tugged from him before it even really began. He meant that he was scared of losing it all, no matter what he did.

There was no way to say all of this without feeling like he cut himself open and sold his soul to the highest bidder, so he settled on, “Noah would never ask me to leave Gansey. That’s the problem.” He would just become smaller and smaller until it wasn’t Noah at all anymore, until he disappeared entirely from this universe, a wispy, smokey memory of what was and what could have been.

“Have your cake and eat it too,” was Matthew’s two cents, and while ridiculously out of place just then, felt as close to the heart of it as Ronan had managed to get to in weeks.

“I need to take a walk,” was Ronan’s decision. Neither of the brothers stopped him exiting the car. Neither called after him or tried to force him to brunch. Ronan was equal parts grateful and dismayed.

—

Despite Noah’s lie, which normally was an unforgivable offense, they still managed to go out the next night. Ronan rationalized that his behavior was a product of their shared, catastrophic environment. Ronan’s own refusal to look truth in the face had bred a festering landscape to live in.

The pair of them were live wires, though, Ronan sitting on the truth of his feelings, and Noah, penitent and conflicted and cold, both waiting to be provoked into a fight, two bears starved on the eve of a feeding. 

They met Gansey at a bar on Broadway, sat shoulder to shoulder in an overlarge booth, sipped their beers in relative silence. There was a fireplace in the corner closest to them, and for once Noah’s nose wasn’t red; he looked pale, tonight, underfed, maybe, like he’d been skipping meals. The purple of his eye sockets was more pronounced than usual— _I’m not sleeping well,_ he’d said that morning, touching at the hair behind his ear again. 

Ronan had smoothed his thumb across Noah’s eyebrows, brought their faces close, stayed that way until Noah shuddered, rest his head against Ronan’s shoulder, shook slightly. 

Gansey had his hand on Ronan’s thigh, now, pressed his fingers into the muscle just above the knee. Ronan’s eyes rolled back and he dropped his face into the crook of Noah’s neck, inhaled. There was sweat and something else, cigarette smoke, and the sooty smell of the ash and wood in the fireplace, all of it overwhelming. 

Despite Noah’s lie, Ronan felt safe. He felt safe.

The walk to the venue was a quiet affair. Noah trailed behind them. Gansey took Ronan’s hand, pulled him close. 

“You didn’t have to come tonight,” Gansey whispered, just for the two of them. Ronan glanced over his shoulder. Noah wasn’t watching them, but Ronan couldn’t tell if he could hear. 

“They are your favorite.” It wasn’t an explanation, really, but Ronan tried a smile anyway; it faltered halfway onto his face, crumpled into a frown when he realized he felt off center, like being pulled in one direction and wanting to go another. Gansey stopped them, took Ronan’s hands, squeezed them, then looked back to where Noah was, smoking now, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up at the crumbling marquee of the Uptown Theater. 

“It’s been a good run, huh?” Gansey was smiling when Ronan looked back. His eyes were sad, but earnest. He squeezed their hands again, then dropped them. 

Ronan shrugged, didn’t have the words for how he felt. Off center only seconds ago, he now felt like he was floating, untethered to the world, a world that was spinning and leaving him behind. 

He exhaled, shaky. 

“Go on,” Gansey tilted his head towards Noah. “Go talk to him.”

Noah was still looking up, blowing a long stream of smoke towards the heavens. 

Ronan came from behind, wrapped both his arms around Noah’s shoulders, pulled him as close as he could. “It’s over,” he said. 

Noah pulled the cigarette from his mouth, turned in Ronan’s arms. His face was cool and removed, smooth. “Over?”

“I love the both of you,” Ronan found it difficult to speak, but the nearness and the stillness helped, like maybe the world wasn’t actually spinning and leaving him behind. Like maybe the world had stopped for him, stopped for this exact moment, “but I love you different than him. He’s my best friend. But you’re…”

He closed his eyes. Something was sitting heavy in his chest, something unsayable, something so large it scared him to think it, let alone give it to someone else to hold. 

He felt Noah snake his arms around his middle, felt Noah lay his cheek on Ronan’s chest, right where his heart should be, right where the heat of his soul was radiating in thick, pulsing waves. 

“I love no one,” Noah muttered into the crushed fabric of Ronan’s coat, “but you.”

The world waited.

—

“Feel my hands.” Noah had his back to Ronan’s chest, Ronan holding him close from the waist. Noah held his hands up, shaky as they were.

Through the pulsing of the white lights, Ronan squinted, raised his own hands and touched at Noah’s wrists. 

The music was calm, a piano and a singer, a mild light show. Ronan felt warm from his toes to his ears, warm from the second drink they had when they arrived at the venue, warm at every point his and Noah’s body slotted against each other, warm where his fingers caressed over Noah’s.

Noah turned in the circle of Ronan’s arms, touched his cheek. The palms were cool and clammy. Ronan kissed him there, tried to catch Noah’s eyes, but they were glossy, unfocused. 

He asked, “Are you okay?” 

Noah shook his head. “I’ll be right back.”

Noah disappeared into the crowd. Ronan watched the direction he went, unsure, suddenly, cold where their bodies were separated.

“I met someone,” was a voice in his ear, and then it was Gansey at his side, pointedly not touching Ronan. Only an hour before Gansey had rubbed circles up Ronan’s inseam. Only an hour ago Ronan had pulsed with the pleasure of knowing what Gansey’s fingers tasted like. 

In the white light, they too were separate now.

“What’s their name?” Ronan asked, once the music lulled and the crowd clapped.

“Blue!”

“What?”

“Her name is Blue.” Gansey used a finger to direct Ronan’s gaze towards an admittedly short human with ridiculously spiky hair. It was the bartender who had served them when they arrived, the one who all but bit Gansey’s head off when he ordered an old fashioned. 

Ronan’s brow rose. “How am I not surprised that you got her to tell you her name?”

“I like that you have faith in my abilities,” Gansey smirked, leaning closer. The temperature spiked between them, sudden and unexpected. Ronan stepped back.

Another song started. Noah had not returned.

“I need to find Noah,” he said.

Something must have betrayed his anxiety, because Gansey’s face became serious. “What’s wrong?”

“He didn’t look good. Went to the bathroom, I think.” 

“Go,” was all Gansey said, so Ronan went.

He found Noah in the bathroom, leaning on the wall next to the urinals, eyes closed. He touched, gentle has he could manage, just above Noah’s elbow.

Noah startled, eyes unfocused.

“Hey,” Ronan coaxed, too worried to mask the concern. 

“I feel horrible.” Noah’s voice was faraway, more than normal. Ronan’s blood hummed. “I’m going home.”

Noah stood from the wall, faltered. Ronan caught his arm, but Noah shook him off. “Please,” he said. This close, Ronan saw a sheen on his forehead, hair sticking in the sweat at his temples. “Stay if you want.”

“Are you kidding?” Ronan ushered Noah from the bathroom, around the corner and through the halls towards the front. “I’ll get the coats. Go call us a car. I’ll be right there.”

Noah nodded, made his way outside. Ronan looped back around to coat check.

In line, he sent a quick text to Gansey, then riffled through his pockets for the stub. 

The line moved like molasses. He checked his phone a couple times, considered abandoning the coats all together, coming back for them tomorrow, but he finally made it to the front of the line, draped both their coats over his arm and headed for the front.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, but there, through the glass doors of the venue, spiraling red and blue lights. 

Ronan’s footing failed him; he stumbled forward, pushed himself through the small congregation of people hawking the scene through the glass.

“Move,” he growled, shoving out into the cold, shoving through he people lined on the curb, “move!”

“Sir,” someone grabbed his arm, tried pulling him back, “you can’t go out there.”

“That’s my boyfriend!” And he either wrenched himself free or they released him on hearing the guttural turn of his voice.

There, in the gutter, Noah. 

Two paramedics were loading him onto a stretcher, another fastening his mouth and nose with an oxygen mask. 

“Noah!” he wailed, pushing as close as he could before two more people held him back.

“Stay back,” the voices ordered, “let them work.”

Something essential was dropping out of him, a life he didn’t know he held on to, tugged from his veins as if by force. “Noah.”

He watched them load Noah into the back of an ambulance. There was something cruelly cyclical to the scene, like he was watching the horror unfold as if suspended outside his own body, as if transported back three years ago to Noah watching the paramedics load Ronan into the back of an ambulance, as if this was the universe’s deranged way at keeping score and making even.

“Noah,” he said, again, to no one, eyes burning, face hot despite the chill.


	2. The Absence

“Do you have a minute?”

Technically, time was not something he could ever spare, a minute or otherwise, but tonight was shaping into something different, something difficult. He pulled out his earbud.

She entered his room, closed the door behind her, leaned there.

“I’m so sorry.”

He ran a hand over the plain of his face, rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, glasses pushed up, haphazard into haphazard hair. “Stop apologizing.”

She groaned, thumped her head against the wood once, twice. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he tensed, ever so slightly, a poor habit, really, and one he’d been working on for years, but it was late, now, and all his training and all his preparation for moments exactly like this had left him two hours ago, maybe three, somewhere around page 38 of the proposal he had open on his desk, “but I really fucking appreciate you.”

“I told you,” he righted his glasses, swiped the smooth face of his nail against his under eye, the dark purple press of it, sunken as it was with years of fatigue, “I really don’t mind. So long as he’s quiet.” He touched the edge of the proposal; the left hand corner was curling slightly from the number of times he ran it through his fingers, purposeful. Thoughtful. Agitated.

“He will be.” 

“Then we’re fine.”

She exhaled. He looked at her.

She was fatigued in her own way; he could see the months of it wrapped around her like a shaw; how quietly her distress had stacked itself against her frailness. How quietly she had withstood it without mentioning. How quietly Adam had let her.

_Are you all right_ he should have asked, but it came out as, “When will he get here?”

“They’re on their way.”

Adam nodded. Blue exhaled again, opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a small smile there, the one she reserved for this, for _them_ , and then held out her hand.

His room was small, but so was she, and when he reached out his own hand, their fingers barely touched, but it was enough. It was enough.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she said, pulling away. 

“I’m almost finished.” It was an assurance, one to meet the unasked question he read between her worry lines. He rubbed at his eyes again. 

“You better be.”

Despite the tense line of his back, the relentless tug of muscles across his shoulders, how desperately tired he was, an ache buried deep down into the core of his bones, Adam felt the left side of his mouth tick up, not a smile, not exactly, but close enough to it that Blue hummed her approval and left him in the relative silence of his bedroom. 

Objectively a new roommate wasn’t anything to cause alarm. Objectively this should be the least of his worries, what with the fiscal year rounding itself out in the next couple months and a one hundred and three page proposal sitting on his desk, one that wasn’t going to amend itself or get itself approved ahead of June 31. Objectively, Adam knew how to prioritize the various segments of his life into pluses and minuses, pluses being those rare few things that deserved any measure of his attention outside of what was strictly necessary to prove that he was, in fact, a human being, and minuses being that endless laundry list of trivialities he bore the weight of without actually internalizing.

Objectively, gaining Ronan Lynch as a roommate, if only _for one month, Adam, I promise_ , should in no way change the inner or outer workings of his day to day, so long as he was quiet, like Blue had assured him.

Subjectively, though, Adam was curious.

This had always been a cross of sorts—a weakness, if he was feeling unkind to himself, which sometimes happened—something that caused him quite a lot of strife as a small child, something that cast him as _other_ through grade school and high school, and something that set him apart and ahead through college and postgraduate, marking him not as a peer or equal, but a beacon to chase behind, to consistently fall second best to.

Nevertheless, he was curious.

The details were sparse, provided succinctly through a brief phone call between his walk from the train to their apartment building, Blue on her own walk from the train to the Aragon, where she was to work late into the night serving vodka Redbulls to underage DePaul students. 

His name was Ronan, and he was Gansey’s oldest friend, Blue told him, and he needed a place to stay, having abandoned his previous apartment and having refused to stay at Gansey’s. But Adam knew other things, the minutiae learned from the ebb and flow of the past six months, the not so recent shape of Blue and Gansey’s on-again-off-again partnership. He knew that Ronan had at one time been a lover to Gansey, that Gansey had not been the only one, that there had been another, a nameless person who hung unmentioned between Adam and Blue, no matter how curious Adam was to know and how desperate Blue was to be rid of the knowledge. 

He knew, peripherally, that Ronan was a drinker, or at least he had been, back in high school, and had taken up the habit again, after the _incident_ , as Adam had come to refer to it in his mind. 

He had stopped keeping track of Blue’s sleepless nights, either spent on the phone, whispering and hollow in their shared living room, or strung out and mean, words shoved at Gansey through the closed door of her bedroom as she drew lines in the sand, boundaries that never seemed to take, tried to keep whatever it was that was hurting Ronan from hurting her, too, from hurting the thing that was forming into something real and tangible and fragile between herself and Gansey. 

He knew that things had quieted down, of late, that Blue was starting to come back into herself again. He saw the lines of it written into her skin, but she was eating again, and sleeping now, late into the afternoons, as far as Adam could tell.

And, she promised. He would be quiet. 

Blue never lied to him. Never had a reason to. Adam never had a reason to distrust her.

Sometime later, maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour, when his eyes had crossed themselves one too many times, he closed the proposal packet, set it on the corner of his desk to be resumed sometime early tomorrow. 

He pulled off his sweater and his pants, climbed into bed in an undershirt and boxers, flicked off the light, glasses closed, protective, in the case in the drawer of his nightstand. 

The ceiling was just visible, however blurred, illuminated by the faint glow from outside his window. A shadow, then another, as two figures crossed under the streetlamp below.

Their door buzzed. 

Adam rolled onto his side, hearing ear up, eyes blinking and heavy at the sliver of light underneath his bedroom door.

He heard Blue open their front door, then the shuffling of bodies inside, the door closing again, coats coming off, hushed voices. They approached, turned into the living room, which sat opposite Adam’s room.

“Thank you.” This was Gansey, practiced and poised, weary, too, maybe, if Adam wasn’t reading into things. 

“Sheets are here, and pillows,” came the directness that Adam had come to love in Blue’s voice. It was followed by a pause, then, perhaps, a little uncertain, like she was self-conscious, “Sorry. We don’t have a third room.”

Adam knew Ronan would be sleeping on the couch, not a pleasant prospect, not for more than a night or too, but it was Adam’s believe that beggars shouldn’t be choosers. He’d be sure to remind Blue of that tomorrow.

But there was no protest, not from Gansey, and not from Ronan, who had yet to betray that he was even inside Adam and Blue’s apartment at all. 

Adam’s eyes drooped as the quiet stretched onward. 

Blue was murmuring something about the television, their DVD player, the remotes, but sleep was tugging at him, and with sleep, rare and unwilling as it often was, Adam forced himself to obey.

—

When he woke next, the clock at his bedside read 5:43AM. 

Adam was shivering.

The chill was snaking its way under his door, creeping beneath the admittedly thin layer of his duvet. He tried, without much success, to roll over, will himself back to sleep, but sleep was an evasive master, and Adam was an unwitting fool, bound to it’s whimsy.

Also, he was freezing.

He forced himself up, tugged a sweater over his head, open his bedroom door.

An archway and hallway separated his room from the living room and kitchen. Through the doorway, around the sliding cold, a man in door to the balcony. He was smoking, elbows careless where they rested on the railing.

Adam said, “It’s you.”

The man startled, looked over his shoulder. “What?”

This man— _Ronan_ —had a face marked by strangeness and angles, a sharpness worn thin with age or sorrow. Funny, how easy it was to see, even a room apart.

“The draft,” Adam clarified, moving into the room, toes ice against the hardwood.

“Oh.” Ronan showed no indication that he would move inside, that he minded the cold at all, brazen as he was in his thin t-shirt, his own feet bare against stone. 

Adam put a hand around the edge of the balcony door. A joke, a poor one: “Since we haven’t paid the gas bill, we sleep with the doors closed.”

Ronan blinked at him. His cigarette was ashing, speedy and reckless, and it was pointless to notice this, the carelessness of this man who was now his roommate, but Adam felt himself honing in on the details, felt himself snared on them. 

Finally, “Right.” The cigarette was abandoned over the side of the balcony, and Ronan was inside, gusty and breathless, and Adam closed the door. 

Because it didn’t really feel like an apology, Adam didn’t really feel like acknowledging the concession. 

It was quiet, between them, and it was cold. 

On the couch, a stack of blankets, two pillows. A duffle bag. All untouched. 

“Problem with the sheets?” Adam asked, moving into the kitchen. The clock on the stove read 6:12.

The quiet was elastic. So much time passed that Adam was sure he’d imagined the other man entirely, a mirage concocted by a lonely mind on a lonely night. _Morning,_ he supplied to himself, ridiculously.

But then, “They’re fine, but I can’t sleep.”

“Ah.” Adam pulled the french press from the drying rack. 

“Whatever they told you,” came the ragged voice behind him, “I can be alone.”

Adam put the french press down on the counter, looked over his shoulder.

Ronan was leaning on the opposite wall, a stance that might have read nonchalance on anyone else, but cast this man into a prison, an animal backed into a corner. 

Adam sensed it, claws at the ready.

He shook his head, “They didn’t tell me anything.”

He couldn’t help it, then, the way his eyebrows formed an unasked question, one that would have sounded like _what is it you thought they said_ had he the courage to ask it. 

But while Adam was rife with curiosity, he was alternatively a dried up patch of earth where boldness came to shrivel, die.

Stillness suited them better, it seemed, two rocking ships, moored in tempted sea. 

He made coffee. Ronan watched.

“What kind of sociopath wakes up this early?”

“This wasn't exactly voluntary," Adam passed Ronan a mug, "but since I'm awake now, might as well get a head start."

"Sounds pointless."

“You're awake,” an accusation, not a very good one.

“Yeah,” an admission, poised like a challenge, "but I was never asleep to begin with."

“Some of us have work.”

“Like I said,” Ronan rolled his shoulders, “sounds pointless.” 

“Not all work is pointless, you know.” Adam lifted the mug to his lips, the heat warming the chilled tip of his noise. It was too hot to drink, still, but his fingers fit nicely against the ceramic, and the heat was welcome. 

“I’m not asking what your shitty job is,” Ronan bit out, his teeth working at the thin, fraying strands of a bracelet. He didn’t seem to realize he was doing this, eyes cast somewhere behind Adam’s left shoulder. 

“Fair.” Adam moved around him, tucked himself into one of the couch cushions, head lulling along the back. He spoke towards the crown molding, “I’m Adam, by the way.”

Ronan laughed; it was an unfriendly sound.

Adam closed his eyes. “What?”

“ _Facilis descensus averno._ ”

Adam exhaled. “ _Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis._ ”

Ronan laughed again, but it was a faraway thing, low and abhorrent and private. 

“You can speak Latin?” Adam heard himself ask, but Ronan was moving on the other side of his eyelids, a laugh like a groan filling the static of Adam’s hearing ear, an exclusionary sound, abruptly there and then gone, and by the time Adam opened his eyes again, Ronan wasn’t there anymore. 

Adam hadn’t even heard the door close as Ronan left.

—

“I’m not a babysitter.” Adam shared a cubicle with a woman named Laura. They were friendly enough to one another, enough so that Adam had felt the twisting pang of obligation to provide her with a birthday donut and then a holiday gift a couple months later. Laura in term provided them back to him.

It was a transaction, in the end, a tiny _thank you_ for not stealing the other’s lunch out of the shared fridge in the break room, or for not forgetting to reload the printer paper and restock the paper clips. It was a small price for his sanity, but Adam was in no way comfortable holding a personal call while the back of Laura’s chair pressed against the back of his.

Which is how he found himself in the cold of the courtyard, scarf wrapped tight, mittens pulled low over his wrists.

Blue hissed on the other end of the line, “No one is asking you to be his babysitter. What we’re asking is you check up on him. At the studio. You’re in the same neighborhood at least.”

Adam _was_ technically at the Ravenswood location for the NPO today, which was where Gansey’s studio kept its address, which was, apparently, where Ronan worked.

( _Sounds pointless_ a sneering voice reverberated around his skull, but he felt disinclined to repeat the sentiment to Blue).

“And where is Gansey, exactly?” 

“He’ll be at UC for another three hours at least.” Gansey owned a design studio, but also moonlighted as a history adjunct. 

Adam controlled his annoyance with a practiced exhale. “If Gansey is so worried,” Adam tried, “then maybe it’s time to cancel his office hours.”

“It will take him an hour to get to the Northside,” Blue was not to be deterred, “and I bet you haven’t even had your lunch break yet.”

“Great,” Adam deadpanned, hating the frostiness in his voice, “I’ll just waste an hour that I don’t have on a idiot who stormed out of the apartment without bringing his phone with him. You do know I have a proposal I’m working on, right?”

Her voice was small, “It’s not due until June.”

He closed his eyes. “Text me the address.”

“Thank you.”

He hadn’t realized until he was almost at the office that morning that Ronan storming out of the apartment might be an issue. Well, technically he hadn’t stormed at all. Just left. Evaporated, maybe. One second he was there and another he was gone. Maybe Adam was losing his mind. Maybe Ronan was filled with enough magic to disappear and reappear at will. 

He hadn’t texted Blue this realization until he was seated at his desk, coffee warm and steaming on its cup holder.

It wasn’t until nearly two hours later that she called him, voice sleep thick, but no less urgent. 

“What do you mean, he stormed out?”

“Well,” he spun in his chair, hunched as close to his desk as possible, but it did nothing to eliminate the sensation of Laura’s eyes on the back of his neck, “like my text explained, he didn’t actually storm out. Just sort of, wasn’t there when I opened my eyes.” It had still _felt_ like he stormed out.

Blue was electric, then, and hung up the phone without asking any more questions. When she called back, nearly twenty minutes later, Adam put her on hold, grabbed his coat and scarf, and took the call to the courtyard, which is where he was now, a text buzzing through the call, undoubtedly the address to the studio.

He told her, “I’ll head out now.”

“I would’t ask you to do this,” she insisted, “if it wasn’t entirely necessary.”

He should have pushed for more details, really, but if the information wasn’t readily supplied, Adam felt it better to not overstep the boundary. Besides, Ronan had been a deer in headlights less than eight hours ago, caught between the idea that Adam had been fed a combinations of his darkest secrets and his anger at those who betrayed his trust. Adam decided he didn’t want to be the cause of that look, not ever.

—

“What are you doing here?”

Adam looked up from where he was verifying the address on his phone. Ronan was in the middle of the sidewalk, jacket careless and flapping, open to the wintery breeze. 

He didn't look happy, cold and stark against the empty street, but then again, Adam wasn't sure Ronan could ever look happy. 

Instead of answering, Adam held up his phone, snapped a picture.

“What the fuck?”

“I was sent here,” Adam mumbled, attention reverted back to the device in his hands, “to prove that you are alive. Which I have done.” He clicked send on the message to Blue and Gansey. The picture _whooshed_ into the ether, but the sound was lost to the wind.

“ _Sent here_? Like a dog?”

“Like the only idiot close enough to your studio, apparently.” Adam deposited the phone back into his bag. “Listen, I have to get back to work. You're not planning on, like—” Adam twirled a hand out in front of himself “—I don't know. Running away again, are you?”

It didn't seem possible, but somehow Ronan's expression hardened further, like a worm hardened to the pavement, summer crisp.

“I told you," he ground out, “I can be alone.”

Adam, to his credit, didn't miss a beat. “And _I_ believe you,” he flipped his hand up, “you just need to make Mom and Dad believe you so they stop wasting my time while I should be working.”

In the time that moved past them, a bus careening and skidding to a stop, passengers flowing out and in, Ronan's expression became complicated, like a puzzle suddenly missing an edge piece. Then, “I thought I said I don’t care about your job.”

His tone was very much the same, but the change in topic nearly gave Adam whiplash. “Huh?”

Ronan flung a careless arm out, waved it up and down Adam’s body as if indicating the obvious. “Hello, Greenpeace. Where’s your clipboard?”

Adam looked down at his outfit. It was much like every other outfit he wore: slacks, wingtips, button down under a sweater. Most of his outfit was covered by his jacket, over which he had slung his messenger bag and a reflective neon vest, an essential for city biking.

“Are you kidding me? This is a messenger bag.” His squeezed at the strap across his chest. “And this is a reflective vest. For biking.” 

“You biked today? It’s ass as fuck cold outside.”

“That makes no sense,” Adam fixed the slipping shoulder of his vest.

“You biking in the middle of winter makes no sense.”

Adam refused to take the bait—there was little reason arguing with Ronan about which transportation options made the most sense for Adam on which day—and turned on the spot, stalked back to where he’d tethered his bike to a “No Parking” sign. 

It was uninvited, of course, when Ronan followed. 

“I was working,” came the voice behind Adam, offered seemingly willingly. Adam tried not to imagine why Ronan’s voice crinkled at the end of his statement, why he even felt the need to absolve himself to Adam. If he was looking for exoneration, he was better suited calling Gansey.

So, Adam frowned. “I didn’t think you worked.”

If Ronan had any sort of response to this, it was lost to the squealing of another bus, rushing northbound. 

Adam pulled on his helmet, turned. 

He was there, of course, watchful and unsettling. His eye sockets were craters, brows two thick, impenetrable lines. The hollows of his checks afforded him a skeletal look, disposition ghastly and ghostly all at once. He was awake, gaze blinding in the grayness, but he lacked effortlessness, he lacked ease. 

Adam knew fatigue when it stared him in the face. Adam knew fatigue when it approached from the left, just beyond the grasp of his perpipheral. Ronan was a husk, walking while asleep. 

Adam riffled in his bag, held out a hand. “Take my keys.”

“Why?”

“As much as I enjoy the somnambulist act, you really should get some sleep.” He adjusted the strap of his helmet. Then, almost an afterthought, but closer to a Freudian slip, “Use my room. I won’t be home until late, and the couch is a torture.”

Ronan took the keys, tentative, considering the rest of him seethed nothing less than intent.

For good measure: Adam took out his phone again, snapped another photo, sent it.

“What the hell?”

“Just letting Blue know that you have my keys—” then he held out his phone, which Ronan didn't reach for, not until Adam shook it at him twice, eyebrow raised in a way that said _you really don't have a choice in this_ , and only then did Ronan take both the hint and the phone, and Adam smiled something wild and triumphant, “—and my phone, so that they can bother you instead of me.”

It made no sense, but Ronan asked, “What if you get into an accident?”

“Hah. What if.”

“You have a death wish or something?”

“Hardly.” No, Adam didn't want to die, but his options were wearing thin, and today had been one long tangle of inconsistencies, but for some asinine and underdeveloped reason, he felt obligated to maintain whatever flimsy grasp Ronan had on life, if only for Blue’s sake, and by extension Gansey. 

Before Ronan could tangle him further, he tossed his leg over his bike, a single wave over his shoulder, and was off, down Lawrence Avenue.

—

Ronan was still asleep when Adam arrived home just after eight that evening. The lights were off, save the insignificant desk lamp, and Ronan wasn’t wearing a shirt.

He didn’t allow himself to look long, but what he did allow himself to see was un-mappable. Had he ran his hands along the dark lines of ink, he’d lose his way somewhere in the thicket, a rabbit given to the chase. Had he, _had he_.

What he did was this: secured his bag in his closet, changed into a pair of sweats, and tucked his laptop and proposal beneath his arm, escaped back to the living room.

He set himself up on the couch, the torturous creature it was, a single certainty throbbing through him—there was no reason to doze on the couch, discomfort a bedfellow with the strange muttering of his pulse, something that had stuttered to life when he’d charted the cresting wave of white bedsheets against unmovable blackness, a back twisted away from him, uninviting. Uninvited.

He worked in relative silence. Eventually Blue emerged from her bedroom, went into the shower, then finally shuffled into the kitchen and made them both coffee, which she set on the coffee table next to Adam’s laptop. 

He grinned up at her. 

She rubbed a hand through damp, irregular hair. “You’re a saint.”

“Shut up,” he said, pulled his legs up under himself, “and sit down.” She did.

“Is he still here?”

Adam tossed his chin out towards his own door.

Blue’s eyebrow shot up. “He’s in your bedroom.” Not a question.

“Sleeping.” He sipped the coffee.

“Lynch doesn’t sleep.” 

“Apparently he does.”

She looked over her shoulder at Adam’s closed door like it might reveal some hidden secret, like maybe Adam was just fucking with her, like maybe there was a hidden camera crew somewhere ready to jump out, shout _Surprise!_

When she turned back to him, she was squinting. “How’d you manage that?” 

“I just told him to go to sleep.” He let the lip of the mug rest on his chin, _warm warm warm_.

She asked, “Why would he listen to you?”

“Maybe you should ask him that.”

“Lynch doesn’t tell me things.” 

Adam shrugged. Ronan didn’t tell Adam things either. Adam wasn’t sure he wanted him too. Adam just wanted him to sleep. It was that simple.

“Who knew you could be such a good roommate?”

He swatted at her arm, a delicate balancing act with a coffee in one hand and his proposal in his lap. “Fuck you very much, I’m lovely.” He settled back into the couch. “A saint, even.”

Her groan was a beautiful thing, and soon they were both laughing. 

Eventually she was off, another night bartending at the Aragon, and Adam was left to his silence again, nestled and warm on the rather unfortunate couch.

Close to midnight was when Ronan emerged. Adam had been planning on waking him an hour ago, but figured he could reread his notes one more time before venturing into his bedroom, rattling the man in his bed out of slumber. 

Thankfully, Ronan managed it himself. 

He just nodded at Adam, then made his way to the balcony. 

Adam knew how ridiculous it was that Ronan wore no jacket, but there was no point dissuading him. It was late, and the city was a quiet press against the world where Ronan opened the door. 

Adam followed. “Do you mind?”

Ronan was as watchful as an owl, unblinking. He shook his head, gestured to the space beside him on the railing. 

From somewhere he procured a cigarette. The menthol burnt the inside of Adam’s nose.

Ronan offered it to him. Adam thought about saying no. That word— _no_ — was well used, perhaps his most used, tucked close to the word _need_ , as in _I don't need_ or _there's no need._

But he didn't speak at all, just accepted what was offered, even if those two words were rattling around the inside of his skull, now, untamable and loud, incredibly loud, ice shifting in the arctic: _no no no_ and _need need need._

It was a small drag, when he took it. “I don't usually do this.”

“It's this or whiskey.” Ronan was talking about himself, Adam realized. “Dick prefers if I die of lung disease to wrapping a car around a telephone pole.”

“Wow,” Adam held out the cigarette. “That's morbid.”

“Hah.” Ronan's eyes flicked to Adam's fingers, face unmoving but with a gaze no less focused. It was a fraction of a second before he urged a hand out, took the cigarette back from Adam. They didn't touch.

Ronan exhaled a thin line of smoke from his nose. “ _Exitus acta probat._

Adam rubbed his eyes under his glasses, the smallest of groans. “Sorry,” he conceded, concentrating, “Is that...uh. Damn. Horace?” 

A smirk. “Ovid.”

“Damn.” Ronan’s profile was a sharp thing against the night. 

“What are you,” Ronan wasn’t looking at him, but the coolness in the lines of his face were decidedly incongruous to the shape of his voice, “a fake Latin scholar?”

“Not a Latin scholar at all,” Adam felt sure enough to grin, remembering their conversation from earlier, “I just really, really like _Aeniad._ ”

“War and famine and slaughter? You surprise me.” Another drag, another offer. 

Adam was not one for vices, but today had been on it’s head before it even began. Adam accepted Ronan’s offer, tucked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, rolled his eyes. “Fair,” he allowed, “but no.”

To Ronan’s credit, he did not push Adam for an explanation. Adam decided he liked this about Ronan, even if it was a mark of disinterest on the other man’s part. Adam was his own type of animal, maybe not backed into a corner, not exactly, but a fox who found a door left open in the night. A question mark hung above him, the only North Star he had ever known.

Adam shifted on the railing, ashed the cigarette over the edge. “It's more like…” his mind was a thoughtful thing, chasing himself for an answer. What he landed on was this: “ _Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?_.”

Ronan dropped his head between his shoulders and held himself very still. His back was study in muscles and tendons pulled to the brink. Adam, wildly, wanted to touch the collar of his shirt. Could he smooth the tension there?

When the chill had become too much, and Adam smoked on cigarette too many, they escaped back to the warmth of the apartment. Adam took his empty coffee mug to the sink, ran it through with water.

“So what kind of scholar are you?” This was asked over the hum of the kitchen sink.

Adam didn’t bother this was a look, just shrugged, setting his mug in the drying rack. “What makes you think I’m a scholar at all?”

Ronan scoffed. “Give me a break. You're basically a mini Dick, if Dick had any real fashion sense.”

“So you're saying my fashion sense is better than Gansey’s?” This earned Ronan a full body turn, Adam’s arms braced against the counter behind him. He was grinning, again, and somehow, it didn’t matter.

Ronan was passionate when he nodded. Again, the uneven lines of this man confused Adam. 

Ronan said, “Oh, a hundred percent. Have you seen the Top-Siders?”

“You're joking.”

“I wish I was.”

Adam tossed a hand through his hair, definitive. “I can assure you,” he said, “I don't own any boat shoes, Top-Siders or otherwise.”

Ronan raised his arms in a mock prayer. “We're saved.” 

Adam couldn’t help the grinning, it was a lost cause at this point. He also couldn’t help this, the truth: “ASL.”

“What?”

“ASL,” he repeated. “American Sign Language…scholar, that is.” 

“Shit.”

“Originally it was the Goidelic languages. Middle and Modern.” A shrug, arms crossed over his chest. “But then I transferred and, well…” That was enough truth, enough for tonight. It was enough.

Ronan was studying him. It was a shrewd thing, not wholly unwelcome. It was a close to a smile as Adam had been able to coax out of him all night. “Now you're just showing off.”

A smirk. “Maybe a bit.”

“ _Am gaeth i m-muir, am tond trethan, am fuaim mara, am dam secht ndirend, am séig i n-aill._ ”

“Who’s showing off now?” Adam pointed a finger at him, then afforded a shrewd look of his own. “That’s my favorite line, you know.”

“What is?”

“ _Am séig i n-aill_ ,” he muttered, “I am a hawk on a cliff.”

“Fuck,” and there it was, a real smile, full and bright and filled with teeth, _white white white_.

Sometime later, when it became clear that neither were interested in sleeping, Ronan rolled his head along the back of the couch, asked him, ”You hungry?"

Adam said, “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops, had to add a third chapter (: oh, btw, are you happy with adam?
> 
> also, some necessary translations (god, apologies for my nerd ass):
> 
> _Facilis descensus averno_ // The descent into Hell is easy (Aeniad, Virgil)  
>  _Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis_ // Smooth the descent, and easy is the way (Aeniad, Virgil)  
> (This whole quote is something like... _The gates of hell are open night and day, smooth the descent, and easy is the way)_
> 
> _Exitus acta probat._ // The end justifies the mean (Heroides, Ovid)
> 
> _Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?_ // Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god? (Aeniad, Virgil)
> 
> _Am gaeth i m-muir, am tond trethan, am fuaim mara, am dam secht ndirend, am séig i n-aill_ // I am Wind on Sea, I am Ocean-wave, I am Roar of Sea, I am Stag of Seven Tines, I am a Hawk on a Cliff. (Song of Amergin)
> 
> unbeta'd, as usual. pls be kind haha.


	3. The Return

"Can I have this?"

Matthew was holding up a single skateboard truck, two baby blue wheels spinning sluggishly. 

"It's a piece of shit." Ronan could see the wear on the wheels, pilling and scuffed, black in places from skidding along asphalt . 

"They're pretty."

Ronan shrugged, careless, and tugged the length of his bracelet string through his front teeth.

Declan, not looking up from his cellphone, "There are only two wheels.”

Matthew said, halfway towards whining, "But they're pretty."

Declan did look up then. There was a split second where Ronan imagined Declan telling Matthew no and then Matthew _actually_ whining, maybe even _crying_ , because though Matthew was still thick with innocence, he was starting to parse together the irregularities of Declan's particular brand of parenting. Also, Matthew really loved Noah. So what if there was only two wheels; the point was that they belonged to Noah-- _had belonged to_.

But Declan didn't say no, and Ronan watched the decision of it flit across his brother’s eyes, before Declan frowned, forced himself to look back at his phone.

Ronan tore at his bracelet again. Matthew went back to digging under the bed.

Sitting where he was, in front of the closet, as he had been for the last hour, two hours, the closet doors swung open, chasming, it was impossible not to feel hateful. Baleful. Matthew was a constant rattle to his left, and Declan a constant, albeit silent annoyance to his right. 

There was a box at his side, empty, and a trash bag at his other, also empty. The closet before him, for all it's monstrosity, for all the gaping doom of it, was relatively small, considering, smaller than he remembered it being, and now it was a smallness he needed to sort through, pull piece by piece until it was empty, actually empty, not just an empty _feeling_ , one that had forced Ronan to his knees every other occasion he had tried to do this. He had tried.

Matthew made a triumphant noise from under the bed, then tossed out the second truck with two more baby blue wheels. Declan, again, said nothing. 

Tentative, like maybe it might burn his hand just for trying, Ronan fingered at the edge of one of Noah's boots. It did not burn his hand, but it burned elsewhere, up his spinal cord, directly into the back of his skull. He ripped his hand back.

The movement caused Declan to look up. Where he'd reserved his judgement with Matthew, it seemed he'd shored it up towards Ronan. "It's not going to sort itself."

Ronan didn't deign to provide an answer to this remark, which, considering the blood that pulsed in his ears and the rippling heat that crept up his neck and the renewed, yet deeply familiar nausea at being in this spot, this room, this apartment, was a major feat in restraint. 

Declan was a study in a different sort of restraint. Where Ronan mastered his footing along the sharp drop of a sheer cliff face, Declan was in a constant search for ways to master those around him, particularly Ronan, who Declan viewed as a liability, a discomfort. A fruit fly, buzzing in his ear.

“Ro,” Matthew prodded from the left, “do you have an Allen wrench I could borrow?”

“You need a socket wrench, not a hex key.” This was Declan, at the right.

“I think,” Matthew said, “I need an Allen wrench.” He didn’t sound put out by Declan’s contrary stance, just the exact brand of thoughtful he always sounded when looking at a puzzle that had already been solved for him.

Ronan heard Declan’s phone lock, the shuffling of a trouser pocket as he stowed it for later. “It’s a socket wrench that changes skateboard wheels.”

“I’m the one who rides skateboards.” This was irregular, perhaps, the way Matthew’s timbre shifted into something darker, separate. Secret, maybe, like this was a conversation Ronan’s brothers had had a million times before, but never in front of Ronan, or maybe because it was a conversation they had never ever had and it was a nasty new strand in their relationship they were only just discovering. Or maybe they weren’t having a conversation at all, and that was the issue, or maybe it was a wholly different conversation wrapped inside one about wrenches. Maybe Matthew didn’t know why he was upset. Maybe Declan did. Declan did.

Declan opened his mouth to speak; Ronan felt the air shift around this action, hated that Declan didn’t know when to keep his fucking mouth shut, hated that Declan was even here, that either of them were here. Before he could stop himself, before Declan could form an adequate response to Matthew, Ronan’s mouth collapsed into a snarl. “Just take the fucking wheels,” he seethed, “and both of you get out.”

“Ro.” 

He couldn’t stand to look at Matthew then, so he didn’t. “I said get out.”

“You’re being inconsiderate.” This was Declan, of course, standing now, hands in his trousers like he was about to exit a board meeting, not face his younger brother in a fist fight. Admittedly Ronan was in no position to brawl his older brother, or anyone, for that matter; he couldn’t even feel his hands, numb as they were, laid face up on his knees. 

“I can’t do this with either of you here.” It was true. He hadn’t been through a single thing in the closet. He hadn’t moved from his spot since before they arrived, uninvited. 

“You can’t do it at all,” Declan amended. For all his blandness, Declan certainly knew how to get to the heart of it. Ronan hated him for it. “This place has been sitting unoccupied for nearly 9 months.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is when I’m the one supplementing the missing income.” 

“I never fucking asked—“

“You didn’t have to,” Declan growled. “I either stepped in or dealt with you going off the deep end when you lost the place.”

“Oh fuck you!” Ronan could feel his hands now. They were balled into fists at his sides, weapons at the ready. He and Declan were nose to nose. When had he stood up?

“Please,” Matthew was fully whining now, “don’t fight.”

“I don’t need your pity hand outs,” Ronan breathed. Declan’s brow rose.

“Have you ever considered,” his brothers preferred breath mint was of the cinnamon variety and Ronan hated it, “that what I do for you is out of love?”

“I don’t need that either,” Ronan spit, whirling away, careening to the door. He couldn’t breathe—it was too hot. Noah was everywhere; two skateboard trucks, four baby blue wheels, a boot in the closet, keys on the hook by the door, a David Bowie magnate on the refrigerator, a glass of water half filled on the bedside, _Cat’s Cradle_ dog-eared, never finished. 

Ronan was made of fire and Declan was an extinguisher. Ronan couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. 

Hand on the front door, Ronan wrenched it open, but there was no fresh air in the hallway, just the doormat that read “Beware: My Boyfriend Bites.” 

He swung himself down the stairs, the banister Noah slid down countless times, the false step at the bottom that he always tripped up even though they’d lived her for three years. 

Declan’s voice carried, when it came, over the railing and into Ronan’s ear as he kicked open the last door, the merciful door to fresh air, the world outside, “We loved Noah too, you know. He was a brother as much as you.”

—

He was fumbling for his headphones outside of Gansey's studio when he saw the reflection in the glass door.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Adam was proud he managed not to flinch at the tone. He turned. "Hello to you too." 

Ronan scowled, but was otherwise silent. Silence was a natural state of being, with Ronan, but this silence was like a window left open in winter, biting, cold enough to shock you from slumber. 

"Not that it's any of your business," Adam continued, as light as he could manage, wrestling the headphones out of their tangle, "but I was dropping off Gansey's keys. He left them at ours last night."

Adam's mind snagged, unhelpfully, on the pronoun— _ours_. Ronan's face did nothing to betray he felt any sort of way about this word, but Adam's brain was a slush of discomfiture, now, somersaulting around why he felt the need to be in any way inclusive in his language. The apartment, _Adam and Blue's apartment_ , was not _Ronan's_ apartment, no matter how many months he'd been staying with them (three, to be exact, even though Blue had promised it would only be one). 

It was not his apartment regardless of his food in the fridge, clothes in the dryer, or shoes by the door. His and Adam's shared insomnia was additionally not an indicator that Ronan was a permanent fixture in either his life or Blue's life. It didn't matter that Ronan and Adam had a long standing, albeit silent agreement that they'd grab empanadas from the corner bodega whenever their insomnia catapulted them past fatigue into something closer to camaraderie. It didn't matter that Ronan was tidy and quiet and thoughtful enough to remake Adam's bed whenever he slept in it. It didn't matter. 

Ronan remained decidedly silent, and Adam all at once felt the awkwardness expand and collapse. There was something off about this version of Ronan, an off-ness Adam had only seem a handful of times in the previous three months, an off-ness that was shocking for it's suddenness and disappointing for the way it cocooned Ronan entirely, shifted him from the man Adam was coming to know, enjoy, even, into something unattainable, distant, and cruel. 

"I didn't think you were coming in today," Adam said, because that's what Gansey had said, and also it was almost four anyway, and Ronan only ever worked until five if he was working at all. What Adam didn't say was that Gansey had refused to divulge where exactly Ronan would be if not at the office. Adam couldn't help but feel he was being avoided. 

It wasn't that Adam needed to know where Ronan was, or that Adam in anyway catalogued the other man's comings and goings, or the fact that it had become near enough to a routine for the pair of them to "run into" each other on the train platform when they headed home from work. They'd ride in relative silence, except for that one time last week when Ronn had asked Adam what he was listening to and Adam had shared his earbud and instead of sitting in silence, they still didn't speak, but their shoulders squeezed together and Cigarettes After Sex seeped into their ears and when the song flipped to _Crush_ , Ronan turned, just enough so Adam could see both eyes, and he smiled, not a kind smile, or a cruel one, but a private sort of smile, as if they were two people who shared anything private at all, as if this was natural. Normal. Adam craved normal.

But that was last week. This was now. Ronan was a different shape entirely, something closer to the skeletal mask of a man from the first day they met. 

Adam, tired of the staring contest, tried for casual. "Where were you?" 

Ronan hissed, "You sound like Mom and Dad." They had taken to calling Blue and Gansey this, and while it was a marginally unfriendly label, it wasn't necessarily untrue—both Blue and Gansey hovered and tittered and implored, especially where Ronan was concerned. It was tiring, in it's own way, definitely tiring for Adam who often fielded Mom and Dad's questioning when Ronan wasn't around in the flesh to do it himself.

"I was asking," Adam forced himself to say, "as a friend. I don't care if you're playing hooky."

Ronan's face did something unexpected, mouth crumpled into a horrible mesh of teeth simultaneously too straight and too sharp. His voice was husky and unfamiliar, like he'd been crying, yelling, _something._ When he snarled, it came out like a fire at its height, blue and searing. "Funny," he seethed, "I don't care about you at all."

Adam went very still and his mind went very blank. 

Not blank like a piece of fresh paper. No. Blank like static was blank, like a vacuum was blank. 

He rubbed his thumb over the ends of his fingers, but it didn't matter—he couldn't feel them. 

When Adam was very young, or at least half as old as he is now, there was very little in his life he could control or anticipate. The world was built on chaos, after all, millions of atoms shivering collapsing colliding into one another, pure entropy, disaster and relief and then disaster again. Adam had perpetually lived inside the state of collapse, like that character from Watchmen, dying and dying, unmade and unmade, over and over, screaming but not heard. What was the point of control, if it was only to be lost again? What was the point of hoping, if it was only to be stolen away?

Adam heard himself say, "Right." 

Turning away was the easiest part. Adam had been turning away from people, places, and things his entire life. It didn't matter that he felt disappointed, because it wasn't actually disappointment at all. It was reflected inwards rather than outwards, like a bruise that had yet to manifest on the skin--tender to touch but no less there. Adam was a mosaic of every type of bruise imaginable; in the right light he was a patchwork of stained glass, beautiful shards plastered and glued into a whole person, trails of an unforgiving life giving way to a creature of immense beauty. But today it was grey. There was no sunlight to cast him through with rainbows. He was dreary, dull and weather worn and frozen to the bone. He was mottled and easily, so easily forgotten. 

It was grey.

"Adam." Ronan's voice had lost it's edge, but they were teetering, and Adam didn't want to stick around long enough to watch either of them fall.

"It's fine, Lynch." It was fine. It was always fine. 

He pulled out his headphones, shoved them into his ears, lost the sound of Ronan to the wind and the street and the music. 

—

He didn't end up seeing Gansey, as had been the original plan.

He did end up going to The Globe on Irving Park. They played rugby on the screens above the bar and the bartender wasn’t particularly nosy and they poured a decent enough Guinness that he didn’t hate himself while drinking it.

He had three before cutting himself off, ate a BLT to pass the time, ignored the frantic buzzing in his coat pocket. 

When it got late enough that the bar was no longer barren, he walked to Graceland. Because it was close. Because it was empty this time of night, this time of year. Because that’s where Noah was. 

He sat on grass next to the marker, closed his eyes. 

An absent hand traced at the letters engraved there, copied the capital N and O and A and H as if he’d forgotten what those letters felt like, as if he’d forgotten what Noah felt like. Had he forgotten Noah? Was that part of the problem? 

The tears were hot and sticking and the pitch of the night was beautiful and terrible, milky blue skies rimmed yellow where the city pushed in, encroaching, and all around was a silence deep and fragrant, broken only by the practiced rumble of the redline behind him, a car screeching distant on Clark Street.

Above, winking stars and passing airplanes completing their route to O’Hare, below, ground so hard, so cold, and a casket, a body, his body. Noah. 

Ronan laid back, arms and legs splayed, a angel fallen, watchful towards the heavens. 

Missing Noah was like a lace untied or a stone in the bottom of your shoe. It was like your name being called across a room, but never finding the voice. Like seeing a friend in a crowd, waving, only to realize it hadn’t been them to begin with. 

Missing Noah was a feeling so vast and so small, simultaneously, Ronan didn’t know how to hold it all, didn’t know where to keep it—for fear of losing it, for fear of having to face it. 

The inconsistencies were starting, too, details erased and muddled and forgotten. His hair was blond, but had it been the color of hay or closer to gossamer? What shape had his voice made on mornings when he drank too much the night before? Did he add sugar to his coffee before or after the milk? What had his lips felt like?

The worst of it was the forgetting, the days when the pain suddenly wasn’t there. When it wasn’t a punishment to be alive. When it was okay and he slept and he ate and he laughed at a joke Gansey told and he smiled when Adam smiled and Blue knew how to nettle him relentlessly and he loved it, he loved it.

Because, inevitably, he’d remember. He’d remember shards of the forgotten pieces like glass in his palm and then the shame would well in him larger than a tsunami and he wouldn’t know what to do with that feeling either, and then he’d lash out and Matthew would cry and Declan would shout after him and he’d avoid Gansey and then there was Adam. There was Adam.

He shivered against the earth, willed himself to stop crying. 

He lost count of the trains that went by as he stayed there on the ground. His phone eventually died in his pocket, a small mercy, and he eventually gave up wishing it was him in the box beneath the earth instead of Noah, at least for tonight. 

Getting up was nearly impossible, limbs stiff and frozen, and it was harder still to find his way out of the cemetery in the dark, and even more difficult to will himself to catch the bus on the corner of Montrose and head in the direction he wished he’d taken ever since chasing it off hours ago.

He finally stood below the window to Adam’s bedroom. He considered calling Adam’s phone, but knew it would be on silent at this time of night. He considered just going inside; he had yet to return his keys, wasn’t sure if they’d ever actually ask him too…

Instead, he picked up two rocks, considered their heft, then he tossed one.

The rock made contact, a partially hollow thud against glass. He had another in his hand, queued to go again, but Adam's face appeared in the square of light, hand pushing aside his curtain.

His face was unmoving, foreign, half shadowed in orangey glow from the streetlamp, the other half baked warm from the inside. His eyes were dark smudges, but Ronan could still see his mouth, a pink line dipping down at both corners. 

His heart lurched. 

They looked at each other.

Adam didn't move to open the window, so Ronan did end up tossing the second rock. It met its mark again, to the left of Adam's face. 

Adam flinched, a bit, as if the rock might shatter the window. His lips dipped lower. 

Ronan put both arms up, gestured for Adam to open the window.

There was a moment when he thought Adam would ignore him, but then Adam was shouldering the window open. There was no screen.

"What do you want?"

There were varying shades of truth to be provided in the fluttering moments that followed, but Ronan landed on something that was equal parts true and painful, as way of atonement for his words earlier. "I need your help with something. Please."

Adam was quiet for a long while, as he usually was, processing. Ronan was, ridiculously, hopeful.

But then Adam shut his window and disappeared. 

It was cold on the sidewalk. A woman and her bull terrier made a wide berth of him and he couldn’t blame them. He had avoided looking at himself in reflections for some time, now, but he had caught sight of himself in the overhead mirror as he climbed off the bus—his eyes were deep set and bruised looking, like someone had dealt him two punches right to the sockets, and his facial hair grew in unattractive patches. His lips, chapped, were taut with concentration, taut with a despair that seemed to live in him like a parasite lived in it’s host. He was a husk. He was barely a husk.

He was barely Ronan. 

It made more sense than he had the wherewithal to appreciate for someone like Adam, dependable and careful and practiced, someone with a 401k and vacation time and tenure track before the ripe old age of thirty five, to put as much space between himself and Ronan as possible. Ronan’s life was a clogged drain that no one wanted to reach their hand into to clean out. 

But of course where Adam was responsible and levelheaded, he was equal parts unexpected. Which was to say, he was the consummate example of the mines laid out to tear through Ronan’s heart.

“What’s up?” Adam was standing just outside the door, coat zipped to the neck, chunky scarf wrapped tight around his ears. His mouth gave him an inscrutable air and his eyes had tired look about them, but that wasn’t so unnatural. What Ronan couldn’t stand was the way his hair stood on end, pushed up and over his left ear like maybe he’d fallen asleep at his desk again, face smushed against that damn proposal that never went away…

Ronan wished he’d thought about changing, splashing his face with cold water, _anything_ , but it was a lost cause; he didn’t miss the way Adam’s gaze snagged on the more unattractive parts of him…the dirt all over his clothes, the sunken cheek bones, the tremor that seemed to make home in his fingers…

“I need your help with something.” Ronan tried not to sound too desperate, too surprised, or too pleased that Adam had come down to talk to him. He kept his gaze squarely over Adam’s right shoulder. “Please don’t ask questions.”

—

Ronan called them a car. 

They went north on Ashland for a long time, silent and separate in the backseat. This part of town was quiet and dark, sleepy and downy and away from the noise of Adam's neighborhood, the rumbling trains and the raging buses, bicyclists swearing and pubs emptying into the streets. The quiet fold of the car led Adam to believe they’d drive straight out of the city and into the suburbs, continue driving onward into the night, endless and ongoing forever, two men with no where to be but here, wordless and hungry.

Neither of them seemed keen on moving, or talking, just existing, looking occasionally, furtive and stolen glances, but no questions. Ronan had asked for no questions.

But then they cut east, then north again, and they were in Edgewater and Adam could see the straight line of the lake as they turned east again, as the car pulled off to the side and the climbed into the night. 

It was colder this far north, this far east, and it was the lake to blame, chilling him and his nose red.

Still, Ronan was silent, trudged them to an unassuming three flat, keyed them inside, led them upstairs.

Ronan hesitated on the threshold of an apartment. Under his heavily booted feet, a doormat that read: “Beware: My Boyfriend Bites.” 

There was a terrible shuddering noise, and Adam's gaze snapped upward. It took him three long seconds to realize where the sound had come from, but then he saw Ronan's shoulder's convulsing, the top of his head pressed against the wood of the door. 

If he hadn't known where they were before, he knew now.

He stepped close to Ronan, reached around him and took the keys from his trembling hands. “Let me,” he said, soft, opening the door.

Ronan might have fallen over had Adam not been there to wrap an arm around his waist, pin him to his side. They stepped into the apartment together.

It wasn’t small. The bedroom was off to the left, a studio mistaking itself for a one bedroom thanks to a cleverly positioned wall. Otherwise, it was open plan, sprawling. Lived in, as well, in that untouched sort of way, like someone had been here only hours ago setting the blankets in a shapeless tousle, left the curtains pushed half open on the far windows, shoes haphazard by the door, dishes unwashed in the sink, a calendar flipped to the wrong month, wrong year.

They stood there, just inside, and it was nearly unbearable. Ronan was shaking and Adam could feel each convulsion where their bodies aligned. 

Adam led Ronan to the bed, sat him there.

His hands landed on Ronan's shoulders, steadying. “Tell me,” he said, “what you need me to do.”

Ronan took a deep, shuddering breath, lifted an arm and pointed at the closet. There were boxes there, two trash bags.

Oh.

No questions.

Adam said, “Right.” He was putting together the pieces in his head, now, snippets of conversations overhead while in the kitchen, offhanded comments Ronan made days, weeks before while they shared fries over a greasy linoleum table at the bodega on the corner. There were other signs, too, topics that were very pointedly avoided, names that were never said allowed, or never said allowed together, in one sentence or one conversation. 

Adam was a watchful creature, a sorely under appreciated talent. If Blue and Gansey weren’t going to provide the details, he’d find a way to read between the lines. He’d find a way to see the answers etched into the lines of Ronan’s frowns, the constant fidgeting, the avoidance of personal questions, the sharpness of his eyes when Adam tread too close to the truth…

This must be Ronan’s condo, the one up for sale, property commandeered by his older brother out of _the goodness of his heart, Ronan, you have to believe that_. 

Ronan must have lived here with Noah, a name Adam only recently learned after an intense game of “Guess My Passcode,” where Ronan’s single hint had been a hushed, cruel laugh, _you ever read the Bible, Parrish? He saved the world two at a time._. 

The double meaning had been lost on Adam at the time, but his heart was hammering in his chest, now, remembering what it had been like to type in the letters N-O-A-H into Ronan’s phone, watch the lock screen fade out, and to be here now with Ronan, because Ronan asked, because Ronan needed Adam’s help, needed Adam _here_ where Noah was, all of him. All that was left of him.

Right.

“I’m going to put everything into boxes unless it looks like trash,” Adam heard himself say. Ronan didn't move, didn't look up at him, didn't give any sort of indication that he had any feelings or thoughts about this plan at all. “We'll get you a storage unit. We can sort through everything else later.”

_We. Later._

He worked in silence, only daring to speak when absolutely necessary, when he couldn’t differentiate between trash and treasure—a ratty sweatshirt with holes in the wrists for thumbs to poke through (trash) and an even rattier skull cap with more holes than not (box). 

It was an hour, maybe, before Ronan suddenly joined him. They worked close, nearly side by side, as if Ronan was running on stolen energy, absorbing any little bit Adam had to spare. On two distinct occasions, they brushed arms, looked at each other. Still they did not speak, but the second time Ronan closed his eyes, dropped his forehead onto Adam's shoulder, breathed there. Adam let him, unsure what he was asking, unsure if he had any answer to give.

They finished around two in the morning. 

Ronan killed the quiet with a gruff, “Fuck this. Delcan can take care of the rest.”

Adam didn't know who Declan was, but Ronan seemed sure enough to put down the half empty trash bag he was holding, sit on the now stripped edge of the king size mattress. Adam copied him. They sat, touching, shoulders all the way to their knees.

There were stacks of boxes everywhere, nearly the same amount of trash bags. The walls were bare. Even though this had been Adam’s first time—and probably only time—inside the apartment, the space was immeasurably changed, like the life had been pulled from the walls, the essence removed like stripping paint. 

Ronan put a hand on Adam's calf. It was unobtrusive, but Adam was tired, near drained, the well of his energy almost completely dry. Having Ronan’s hand where it was, firm, unmoving, was like being filled up again, like a stream had opened up beneath him. 

He dropped his neck, sighed.

“Thank you,” was what Ronan said, eventually, voice that same, tired, growl. 

Adam didn't lift his neck, but he turned his gaze up, found a pair of startling blue eyes through the sheaf of his hair. Adam smiled, reassuring. “You hungry?”

Ronan said, “Yeah.”

—

“Noah. He, uh. Died about a year ago. Cardiac arrest.”

They were seated where they usually sat, a terribly cramped fold out card table, linoleum top, knees pressed and scrunched hard against one another underneath. Ronan was watching Adam as he ate, slow, careful bites. To his credit, Adam didn’t flinch or shy away or make any sort of indication that what he had just heard was in any way morbid or tragic or something worth pitying. 

He just swallowed his bite of empanada and met Ronan’s gaze. 

Ronan swallowed too, but he hadn’t been chewing. “So,” he continued, “I’m moving out.”

“Officially.” Adam said it like a fact. It felt strange, but also good, to be taken seriously. To be taken at face value. Very few people took Ronan at face value anymore.

“Officially,” Ronan echoed.

They continued eating. There was a rerun of a soccer match playing on the overhead screen. The two men working the kitchen had migrated to the front of the store and occupied the only other table. Both were drinking, chatting, their voices a dull hum. A pleasant hum.

“Before,” Ronan tried, when it became clear that Adam wouldn’t press him, “Earlier, I mean. I was trying to. Pack. But my brothers were there.”

Adam paused with his second empanada halfway to his mouth. He lowered it, but didn’t place it back on the plate. Ronan liked this. He hadn’t stopped, not entirely. He wasn’t tucking in for a long winded conversation. He was just listening. Attentive.

Ronan breathed out. “I couldn’t, with them there. I needed to see Gansey.”

Adam cast his gaze down, nodded. Then bit into his food. 

“You can ask me questions,” he blurted out, sudden. Adam must have also thought this sudden, because he looked up, just as sudden, brows creased.

“Do you want me to?” Adam asked this a delicately as he could around a mouthful of beef.

Ronan answered honestly, “I don’t know what you would ask.”

Adam shrugged, jostled his hand out to Ronan’s nearly untouched food. “Maybe why you aren’t eating,”

Ronan picked up an empanada, held it close to his mouth, then lowered it. “I shouldn’t have said that earlier.”

Adam blinked at him. His face was a strange collection of pieces, freckles across the bridge of his nose, eyelashes so long they pressed against the lenses of his glasses, and cheekbone both rigid and smooth, at least to look at. And then there was his mouth, red and greasy and puckered as it was, concentrating, eyes piercing and watchful. 

Ronan lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m trying…” he faltered, breathed out through his nose, “I’m trying not to be that person.”

“I’m not asking you to be anyone,” Adam said, calm.

“I know.” Ronan lifted up his empanada. “I’m not doing it for you.”

The ate. Someone scored a goal in the match on the television. Another customer arrived, ordered, and left again before Ronan rubbed the last pocket of his empanada onto his plate, scooping the falling stuffing back onto the dough.

“Where do you work?” he asked.

Adam didn’t miss a beat. “I thought you care about my job.”

“Ha ha.” Ronan shoved the last bite into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “Seriously though, I just assumed you were some sort of professor. But there’s no school in Ravenswood, is there?”

“No, there isn’t,” Adam confirmed. Ronan was watching the lines of his lips. They were turned up at the sides, now, a vastly more enjoyable makeup than how they’d been many hours ago. 

“Well?” Ronan prompted. His mouth was also doing something complicated, something similar to Adam’s tiny little grin.

Adam wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin, sat back in his chair. Their legs were still touching, but where they had once been crowded and cramped they were now slotted, Ronan-Adam-Ronan-Adam. 

“I’m an ASL educator and translator for an NPO.”

Oh.

“Before you ask,” Adam’s right most leg was shaking, now, up and down up and down, a novel agitation for someone Ronan saw as unflappable, “no, I can’t hear out of my left ear, no I wasn’t born like this, and no I don’t want to talk about it.”

This was conveyed like someone might convey a shopping list or a itemized action plan.

“I wasn’t going to make you talk about it.” Ronan put a hand on Adam’s knee under the table. The fidgeting ceased almost immediately, but the muscles were corded, distrustful. “But thanks for telling me.”

Some of the tension bled from Adam, but not all of it. He uncrossed his arms, at least, a victory, however small. 

Ronan took a long drink from his soda— _their soda_ , Dr. Pepper, which Adam had insisted on. Adam was watchful from across the length of the table, one hand curled over the edge of it, pointer finger tapping, listless.

“It was difficult, right before.” Ronan bit the end of the straw. 

Adam just held out his hand for the soda, said, “What was?”

“Things with Noah.” Ronan passed over the soda. Then, admitted, “And Gansey.”

Adam was refolding life back into the chewed up side of the straw, hummed, thoughtful. 

“You can ask,” Ronan’s teeth were gritted like he was in pain, but it was more like the pain of anticipation, knowing what was queued up inside of Adam and knowing it might never come, not unless Ronan said it first. He didn’t want to say it first.

Adam, for what it was worth, didn’t look conflicted, just asked, “Are you polyamorous?” 

“No,” Ronan answered immediately. Then, a pause, brief, but thoughtful in it’s own way, followed by, “I don’t know. Yes. With them, yes.”

“I’m not,” Adam said, tucking the mutilated straw into the corner of his mouth, “I don’t think.”

Ronan didn’t say anything and Adam didn’t seem bothered by this. 

Adam, around the end of the straw, said, “What was difficult?” 

“Everything and nothing.” No one had asked Ronan this question. Ronan expected it was because they didn’t understand how he’d been with two people at once. Ronan wasn’t sure how he’d done it himself, and yet it was clear that something about Ronan had perturbed people—his brothers, mainly, the people at church too. Other people, people like Gansey and Blue, they’d been too close to the situation, too close to Noah, and what they probably thought of as respectful distance in reality felt like being held under a microscope, or a bright hospital light, though never told why. Ronan hated feeling like a specimen. He hated feeling watched and inspected. He just wanted to feel known. “Loving both of them, separately. Loving Noah more. Loving Gansey differently.” 

Adam just nodded, an action Ronan was coming to understand as processing. It wasn’t an empathetic gesture, exactly, but it certainly didn’t feel like he was being pinned down and operated on either. 

Adam twirled the styrofoam cup in his hand. “Loving _two_ people,” was all he said, wistful, like he was eighty years old all of a sudden and he’d seen two young boys run past the window, like he was remembering something so far off, something so impossibly unattainable that it surprised him to realize he’d said anything aloud at all.

He shook his head. Ronan wanted to reach out, touch his hand.

So he did.

Adam met his gaze then, and it felt much like it had on the train—had that been just last week? 

It was private sort of look. Open. Wanting. 

Ronan asked, “Wanna get outta here?”

—

The apartment, when the got back to it, was mercifully dark.

“Where’s Blue?” Ronan was very close to Adam’s back, breath hot on the part of his neck left exposed under his scarf.

“Gansey’s.” Adam turned around.

It was a small hallway. They were chest to chest. 

Adam could just make out Ronan’s eyes in the gloom, milky white, blue ringed irises, eyelashes dark and curled. 

“Are you tired?” he heard himself ask. It was a whisper.

Ronan whispered back, “No.”

Ronan’s chest was firm under Adam’s hand. It lay in the center, just above the thudding of Ronan’s heart. Ronan might have hissed, or it might have been the sound of his coat falling to the floor. It was hard to tell, with Adam’s eyes closed as they were.

Ronan unwound his scarf. Adam appreciated that he hung it on the hook by the door, the same with Adam’s puffy coat. 

In the deep, in the hush, Adam shivered. Ronan wrapped his arms around his shoulders. They were still, together. Adam’s right ear replaced his hand at the epicenter of Ronan’s torso. The heart beat was so loud, like a wave roaring, endless and onward. 

When Adam shivered again, Ronan said, “Bedroom.”

Ronan flicked on the lamp on Adam’s desk. 

Adam pulled off Ronan’s sweater. 

They were painted in shadows tinted orange, the flicker of a fire in winter. 

Ronan’s hand made a perfect curve at Adam’s neck, tilted his chin up, stilled.

Adam searched for shame in those eyes. He searched for the signs of pain, found the story etched in the crows feet, in the threaded grey hairs above Ronan’s ears. There were two unique lines between Ronan’s brows, two unasked questions. Adam wanted to run his thumb over them.

“We don’t have to,” he said. 

Ronan closed his eyes. Their foreheads touched. “God,” he breathed, “but I want to.” 

Their noses caressed, skin rubbing, exploratory, suddenly warm, so warm, the hand at Adam’s neck smoothed down and over his shoulder, fingers pressed into the muscle there. 

“I want to,” Ronan said again, this time with his lips over Adam’s good ear. 

Adam’s mouth fell open. “Please,” he was still whispering. 

Ronan titled their faces together, then, and they kissed. 

Something passed between them, an ancient whisper of two hearts meeting across a divide, two hearts longing through an emptiness. There were words for moments like this, but they evaded him, wisping tendrils of smoke in a frosty air. There, gone, there again, gone again. 

Adam’s knees hit the bed. Ronan was over him, legs slotted and tight, and their mouths were breathing fire backwards and forwards, sliding, oil slick.

“Ronan.” Adam’s shirt was pulled up and off and they were touching, _Ronan_ was touching, trembling, pads of fingers searching and shy and a shiver, just a shiver against Adam’s rib cage.

Adam clasped his hands over Ronan’s, brought both to his mouth, rubbed lips over the knuckles, felt their quaking. “Ronan,” he breathed. 

“I want to.” Ronan kissed him again, fire fanning. 

A tension was building, heedless and needy, and somehow they were naked and together and Ronan felt sure, strong, under Adam’s hands, breathless, but growing, yawning open wider and wider until there was a space large enough to fit Adam inside.

Adam was panting, above, near gasping, but what caught in his mind was the picture of them from the outside, two bodies tied together through loss and loneliness and desperation for a voice, a face, hands to understand and guide and it was the two of them, just the two of them.

Reckless, he thought, _I could love this man_ —Ronan groaned his name, two long syllables, _Aaaaa-dammm_ , and it burned itself onto his palm, right where Adam’s hand held Ronan’s hand— _I could love this man, if he let me_.

Later, it was this: tired and spent and warm, the two of them nestled in the duvet, Ronan’s head on Adam’s chest. Adam had a hand rubbing at the parts of Ronan’s scalp where the hair grew long. 

When, at long last, Ronan spoke, his lips were dry against Adam’s chest hair. The words wove themselves into the tense muscles of Adam’s back, burrowed into the soft, tender cushion of his heart, warm warm warm like a promise. He felt it, the anticipation, the longing; he felt it, when Ronan shook against him. He felt it, truth that came with time, that came with patience, voices shared across linoleum tables, bodies explored by lamplight. Ronan was here, now, and there was his oath: “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit_ // Perhaps even these things will be good to remember one day (Aeniad, Virgil)
> 
> hi so, this was a mess from start to finish, but hey, i finished! hope it was worth the ride, the wait, etc. i had such a good time writing this, despite the whole wild mess of it, so i hope you enjoyed reading (:
> 
> i have a very strong feeling this will be the first in a short series of works. ugh, i have so much i want to write from this universe........but we shall see. i recently got accepted into a writing program, so i may be more delayed than normal (which is to say, i'm already impossibly behind on everything im writing, so i hope you can keep me in ur thoughts through this difficult/amazing time in my life haha).
> 
> again, no beta, proof reading is literally evil to me, dont shame me. luv u.

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i'm back on my bullshit for no other reason than i love procrastinating with my two pynch idiots.
> 
> this is a very loose AU based on my favorite film of all time, Les Chansons D'Amour (or Love Songs). go check it out if you've never seen it. it's a musical, & this fic is very much not a musical, so bear with me while i work through the adaptation. 
> 
> speaking of musicals, the title comes from a song from the movie, some lyrics here for you, translated from french (a taste of what's to come):  
>  _Wash  
>  My soiled memory in this river of mud,  
> With the tip of your tongue cleanse me everywhere  
> And don't leave the slightest trace  
> At all  
> That which binds me, tires me  
> _
> 
> i'm gifting this fic to the incredible charactershoes, who is currently writing my favorite pynch fic of all time ([seek ye the living](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21128534/chapters/50280608)). please go read it & give it all the love it deserves.
> 
> i apologize for how sad some of this fic is, though i hope you're curious enough to stick with it & see how our lovely adam comes in to play. stay tuned. please let me know your thoughts (: 
> 
> no beta, i hate proof reading, luv u, etc.


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